drobo

[aspekt 0]

So I had a drive fail on me right as I was finishing up a project the other day & figured it was time to acquire a secure storage solution. I looked at a couple of options and then I came across the "Drobo S". anyone have one or ever used one?

[finegrit 0]

They are wonderful, but a bit slow. I swear by mine, but don't use it for heavy read/write tasks. My main work set-up has a Drobo where I store all documents, project files, etc. And I have a fast RAID that stores backed-up media.

 

The nice thing about the drobo is that you don't have to think about it. It just works and you can just add more drives to increase the size. They're pretty sweet.

[Beaver 1]

So I had a drive fail on me right as I was finishing up a project the other day & figured it was time to acquire a secure storage solution. I looked at a couple of options and then I came across the "Drobo S". anyone have one or ever used one?

 

I looked a while back, but they didn't have eSata yet. This looks really good. Would also like to hear if anyone has real experience with them.

[aspekt 0]

I looked a while back, but they didn't have eSata yet. This looks really good. Would also like to hear if anyone has real experience with them.

 

yeah I wasn't going to get one, but then I saw the "S" model with the eSata, and that was the deciding factor-

[edrhine 0]

I do not have one myself, but have only heard great things about them. I personally have an Iomega external with firewire 800 and Esata. It def rocks... super fast and stable with all raid setting you could want and removable drives.

[Mousel 0]

If you're in the market for a RAID give G-Tech a look. I've had a good experience with them. Their package deals are fairly economical, too.

[demafleez 0]

as an alternate to the drobo, HP's MediaSmart servers are something you might consider. I researched both it and the drobo, ultimately going with MediaSmart since the redundancy, expandability and networkability were all there at a lower cost. so far, a happy camper here.

 

It is not a RAID however and the performance maybe lacking for some with real speed needs. I ran the AJA disk speed test on it and it seems the bottleneck lies in its ethernet connection. I got speeds of 30-40MB/sec using internal SATA drives. Redundancy is handled thru it's duplication feature which can be selected on a folder basis (I think that's a Windows Home Server function, on which the MediaSmart is built)

 

on top of all that it, plays nice with my Time Machine backups.

 

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mediasmart-server/

[Grundly 0]

I setup a Drobo S at a place hoping the e-sata would be fast and all. The e-sata only writes fast, but was pretty slow read speeds, making it not a "Professional" solution. Fine for time machine and putting old projects on, but the read speed sucks alot. Need an extra Raid 0 that backs up to Drobo.

[aspekt 0]

I setup a Drobo S at a place hoping the e-sata would be fast and all. The e-sata only writes fast, but was pretty slow read speeds, making it not a "Professional" solution. Fine for time machine and putting old projects on, but the read speed sucks alot. Need an extra Raid 0 that backs up to Drobo.

 

 

Yeah, it's definitely not the fastest solution. I actually wasn't planning on working off it. It's more for security and peace of mind-...though, did you set it up yourself & install the drives? Because I think if you buy it stock with the drives installed it comes with WD green drives which only spin up to 5400 -

[Grundly 0]

Yeah, it's definitely not the fastest solution. I actually wasn't planning on working off it. It's more for security and peace of mind-...though, did you set it up yourself & install the drives? Because I think if you buy it stock with the drives installed it comes with WD green drives which only spin up to 5400 -

 

Yeah, no problem then if you don't want to work off of it, I just wish they wouldn't try to push the product as a solution for video professionals.

 

We grabbed drives from an online computer store, think you will get more bang for your buck that way.

[vozzz 2]

drop box.

 

free up to 2gb, auto syncs as you work.

 

problem with computer? sign in on the next one and you're exactly where you where.

[aspekt 0]

drop box.

 

free up to 2gb, auto syncs as you work.

 

problem with computer? sign in on the next one and you're exactly where you where.

 

yeah I started using drop box as well. and it's great for projects that don't have huge assets involved.

[aspekt 0]

So I got my Drobo the other day. Setup was extremely simple. just install the softawre, plug the drives in & you're in business. I've got it hooked up via esata & it's very fast. essentially it's a raid 5 stripe. I've heard some complaints about working off it, but I'm not having a problem with that at all...though at the same time I'm not moving any heavy files right now. I've only got 2tb plugged in, but It can handle up to 16. whenever you need more space just plug another drive in, and it can be any size drive, doesn't have to match. It might be a little more expensive than other rigs, but you get what you pay for-

[Guest Sao_Bento]

So I got my Drobo the other day. Setup was extremely simple. just install the softawre, plug the drives in & you're in business. I've got it hooked up via esata & it's very fast. essentially it's a raid 5 stripe. I've heard some complaints about working off it, but I'm not having a problem with that at all...though at the same time I'm not moving any heavy files right now. I've only got 2tb plugged in, but It can handle up to 16. whenever you need more space just plug another drive in, and it can be any size drive, doesn't have to match. It might be a little more expensive than other rigs, but you get what you pay for-

I recently got one too - I'm quite happy with it. Even over a wireless network it seems plenty fast.

[anothername 0]

I need to find a storage solution and I'm looking at the drobo and drobo s, so bumping this thread. I've been told by one salesman and looking at Grundly's comments that even with eSata the drobo s won't be fast enough to work off of and so I either need to work off an internal Raid 0 in which case I'd probably just back that up to the regular drobo and forget the esata or else maybe I'd have to look at spending more and going with something like the G-Tech with mini sas.

 

Salesman said basically drobo s was a waste of money wouldn't be fast enough to work off and if I'm just going to use it for backups may as well save some $ and stick with regular drobo and firewire 800. Just wanted to see what your thoughts were on this?

 

Are any of you guys successfully playing back uncompressed HD off the drobo s 8 or 10 bit, 720 or 1080?

[Guest Sao_Bento]

There are two different needs. Fast drives to work on and mirrored storage to safely save things that you don't want to lose. Drobo is the second one. No mirrored array is meant for the first one (in terms of editing uncompressed video).

 

 

I need to find a storage solution and I'm looking at the drobo and drobo s, so bumping this thread. I've been told by one salesman and looking at Grundly's comments that even with eSata the drobo s won't be fast enough to work off of and so I either need to work off an internal Raid 0 in which case I'd probably just back that up to the regular drobo and forget the esata or else maybe I'd have to look at spending more and going with something like the G-Tech with mini sas.

 

Salesman said basically drobo s was a waste of money wouldn't be fast enough to work off and if I'm just going to use it for backups may as well save some $ and stick with regular drobo and firewire 800. Just wanted to see what your thoughts were on this?

 

Are any of you guys successfully playing back uncompressed HD off the drobo s 8 or 10 bit, 720 or 1080?

[anothername 0]

There are two different needs. Fast drives to work on and mirrored storage to safely save things that you don't want to lose. Drobo is the second one. No mirrored array is meant for the first one (in terms of editing uncompressed video).

 

Thanks for clearing that up. Was a bit confusing for me since they aren't using a standard raid level.

[Jim Gravina 0]

Thought I would chime in here as I am also looking for a decent RAID solution. Haven't looked into it too much yet but a friend of mine pointed me to Mercury Elite Pro. Any thoughts on there?

 

Jim

[KGB 0]

I'm looking at the Drobo my self now. Sao and aspekt, did you guys pick up the FS versions?

[anothername 0]

Thought I would chime in here as I am also looking for a decent RAID solution. Haven't looked into it too much yet but a friend of mine pointed me to Mercury Elite Pro. Any thoughts on there?

 

Not sure if this will be helpful to anyone but...in the end I wanted to go with something that I could configure myself (e.g. choose different raid levels) to have maximum flexibility in case my needs changed. Also didn't like that the drobo uses their own proprietary flavor of raid, figured in case of hardware failure would be good to have disks in a standard raid config.

 

That mercury elite pro looked like a really good deal. I got the the Lacie 4 big quadra just because my supplier was able to get it for me at the same price as mercury elite and didn't have to deal with shipping etc.

 

I've been running it in raid 5 and so far very happy with it. Had read some bad reviews about the noise but so far have found it very quiet. Haven't had a chance to pick up an esata card yet so can't say how fast it can really go but so far even with firewire 800 nit too shaby for backups.

[Colin@movecraft 0]

At Cobra Creative we have a Drobo Elite. They interviewed Jason, our Art Director, for a press piece.

 

http://drobo.com/pdf/Cobra_CaseStudy_v03.pdf

 

c

[KGB 0]

Been looking around for comparable products.

Synology seems to have a couple, and are building a good reputation.

http://www.synology.com/us/

 

The products are more NAS based(kinda like the Drobo FS), however are reported to be rather quick.

Edited June 24, 2010 by KGB

[aspekt 0]

-bump- so I bought the drobo about 6 months ago & everything has been great. The other day the housing went on it. I contacted drobo tech support. They overnighted me another unit. I swapped the drives from my old drobo and there was "0" data loss. Chalk one up for data robotics!